Mary began her career in the visual arts with a distinct focus on photography. "My background in photography," She says, "supports the importance of composition in my painting. While the elements differ, their relationships are crucial."

With her background in photography, she work thus far has been exclusively in abstraction. She is primarily influenced by post-war modern American artists. In the mid-1980's, her interaction with Mark Lunning of The Open Press introduced her to the world of printmaking: "In the beginning, I successfully incorporated photographs as collage elements into the monoprinting process, which in turn led me to focus solely on printmaking."